[Arm-netbook] Will EOMA68-A20 be sweatshop-free?

[Paul Boddie]

On Saturday 27. August 2016 14.41.32 Xavi Drudis Ferran wrote:
> 
> Just like you sometimes tell that talking to FSF or Think Penguin got
> you to understand issues better, even issues you already understood
> for long but from maybe a different angle, I think talking to
> Electronics Watch or some other people may help you understand not
> only the labour reality but the work of people working to change that
> reality and the potential markets you might reach and the constraints
> that it would require. I read that you would have loved to know Open
> Source Ecology before you did. Well, don't wait till the next
> crowdfunding effort to know more worthwhile groups.

I think that even some of the people who have *raised* issues have learned 
something new about those issues, too, perhaps realising that they didn't 
actually have the whole picture, either. Certainly, through constructive 
criticism everybody can become better informed.

I can't believe Luke didn't know much about Open Source Ecology, though. I'd 
have thought it would have been of particular interest to him. :-)

[...]

> If you have some referents to point to, people may agree with them and
> buy. They probably won't care for some of the criteria (as long as
> they're not contrary to them) and will care a lot for a few. So some
> people may come to you for free software, some for environmental
> impact, some for fair trade, etc. But if you go just "trust me, I'm a
> good guy, I'll do it properly" then you are requiring people to agree
> in basically all of your views, which is very hard to achieve for
> anyone. If you broaden the field to all subjects, then mostly anyone
> disagrees with anyone.

Just these last two sentences are a better way of summarising something I've 
said to people for a while about famous people who have a good reputation in 
one field who then start giving their opinions in other fields. A lot of the 
time, such famous people leverage their support amongst people who just like 
everything that the famous person is already known for. It's a kind of 
"everything they touch must turn to gold" thing.

But many other observers will not agree, seeing it as a less-than-properly-
informed incursion into something that they personally do know something 
about. For them, it can even tarnish that person's good reputation and even 
make them question what that person really achieved. (And there are cases 
where people really should be backtracking to the career of the individual 
concerned and properly evaluating it.)

Not that I'm calling Luke's judgement into question here at all. I think 
Xavi's summary is a more general and useful way of thinking about such things, 
and I was only describing a special case of the phenomenon that one sees all 
the time in the media.

When I criticised Fairphone for their Free Software commitment, I felt bad 
about doing so, but I did so because relatively little effort needed to be 
expended for the organisation to inform itself about the software situation 
and to either make a sustainable choice or to acknowledge that a better choice 
could have been made. Instead, the organisation was ambiguous about it (the 
chipset even changed for the first phone they did while it was being made) and 
they were apparently more interested in pursuing custom user interfaces over 
ensuring the transparency and long-term viability of the software for the 
device, thus undermining the sustainability goals of the initiative.

Asking around on mailing lists about Free Software is a lot less effort than 
finding ethical mining and production enterprises in Africa and Asia, and 
compared to Luke, Fairphone is a well-resourced organisation (although 
obviously nothing compared to the average smartphone manufacturer). So it 
might be unreasonable to add Fairphone-like criteria to Luke's 
responsibilities right now: it's just him doing all the work, I guess, and so 
he should take it easy like he seems to like telling me to take it easy. ;-)

But just as Fairphone could have had a productive conversation with Luke, 
maybe Luke could have a productive conversation with Fairphone. At least then, 
such other concerns will at least have been openly acknowledged. Maybe he 
already has spoken to them about their core area of expertise: if so, I 
apologise for the wall of text. ;-)

We shouldn't make the same mistake of not getting in touch with organisations 
who complement this initiative's initial objectives and whose knowledge can 
enhance the end result. It's easy to criticise someone for making a mistake, 
but we shouldn't then make the same mistake ourselves.

Paul

P.S. For the record, Fairphone have improved their sophistication around Free 
Software a great deal. They appear to at least try and document the build 
process and encourage people to target the device with other software 
distributions. There are still binary blobs, but I would like to think that 
they realise the problems with such things now, thus undermining the denial 
culture that one often sees in the communities around products and projects. 
If they could fix some bizarre licensing restrictions that seem to persist 
(maybe only regarding Fairphone 1), then that would also signal useful change, 
too.